Whither Regional Science?

Mine has been a lovehate relationship with regional science. I first learned of regional science in September of 1955, soon after my amval in the United States as a green new graduate student. A year earlier William L. Garrison, who became my advisor, had spent time at the University of Pennsylvania and had become one of geography’s earliest and most active participants in the fledgling Regional Science Association, which I joined in 1956. When Edward L. Ullman returned to the University of Washington from leave in Europe, he reinforced the view that something important was stirring at Walter Isard’s instigation. For those who could not attend the annual meetings, the early Papers and Proceedings of the Regiorial Science Association were awaited with eagerness, and as soon as Isard’s (1956) Location and Space-Econoniy was published, Ganison used it as a text for his graduate-level course in economic geography. I was very receptive to Walter’s ideas, since I came to the United States convinced that location theory was the key to understanding economic geography. In my suitcase were already well-marked copies of Edgar Hoover’s (1948) Locafion of Economic Activity and August Lbsch’s (1954) newly translated The Econoniics of Location. I had applied to those American universities I thought most likely to offer advanced training in what I soon came to identify as regional science. As I worked on a master’s thesis in 1956, I reached out to other works in location theory. Walter Christaller’s (1934) Die zeritralen One in Siiddeutsciiland came on interlibrary loan from the University of Chicago. According to the checkout card, it had last been borrowed in 1940 by Ullman as he worked on his article “A Theory of Location for Cities” (Ullman 1941). It was this article that led me to apply to the graduate program at the University of Washington. Ed later confided to me that Christaller’s study had been recommended to him at Harvard by prewar visitor August Losch. He still had the handwritten note on which Losch had